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The Grand Opening of China’s Largest Church

Take a look at the pictures–and ask yourself if this fits your expectation of the Church in China? Or even of the Church in your own city?

How do we make sense of such large churches? In America, I encourage people to pull out (or pull up online) the yellow pages for their community. In most communities, the telephone company still lists all the Churches for free. The average church has less than 75 people in attendance on Sunday: triple that number to 225. And then add in adjustments for any large churches you have in town. That will give you an approximate number of seats available if every congregation had two full services–and an approximate number of people in your community who have a church affiliation. In most American communities, the number of seats available on a weekend is less than half the population. In my community with what appears to be lots of Churches, we still have 50,000 people with no Church affiliation! There’s plenty of possibilities for evangelism.

Now in China, Joshua Project reports that 10.9% of the 1.3 billion people in China (e.g. 140 million people) are unreached and have no access to the Gospel in their own language or through a Church in their own language. To put it a different way, of the 514 ethnic people groups in China, 419 remain outside the active reach of the Church! For more info, go to http://www.joshuaproject.net.

Bottom line: we praise God for the advances of the Church in China–and we continue to persevere in prayer for those in China who yet have no witness to the Gospel in their own language and culture.

Over the past ten years, China has seen something of a building boom for churches. Partly to meet the needs of the ever-increasing numbers of Christians in China and partly to demonstrate their “support” of religion, the government has not only allowed new churches to be built; they have actually provided funding and assistance. This article, translated from the Mainland website Christian Times is a report of the grand opening of LiuShui Church, which now lays claim to being China’s largest church.

February 19, 2013 marked the beginning of a “Week of Thanksgiving” for the newly built church in Liushi Township, Yueqing District of Wenzhou, in Zhejiang Province. According to news reports, it is now China’s largest church, with regular seating for 5,000 people. During Thanksgiving Week there will be 6000 to 8000 people in attendance. The cross on top of the church tops out at 63 meters. Wenzhou is…